MK812 B2B and Key Account Management SEM2 Assignment Brief | University of Strathclyde

Instructions:

Prepare an essay with a word limit of 3,000 (+/- 10%) words. At least fifteen journal articles should be cited.

Pick a B2B company of your choice that produces manufactured goods, not services. Please make sure this is a B2B company. If you choose a consumer company, this will result in failing the assignment. If you choose a large organisation with different lines of business, you must ensure that you focus on a specific SBU. For this company (or its SBU), discuss the following:

• Briefly describe the company, what the company’s main product(s) is, and what the key sectors the company supplies?
• What Segmentation, targeting and Positioning strategies would best serve this company? To answer this, please also consider how demand for the company’s product(s) in different segments is expected to develop over the next three years.
• Consider how demand for the company’s product(s) is expected to develop over the next three years.
• Would it make sense for this company to adopt a Key Account Management approach?
• What options would be available for this company if servitization was to be considered as a source of competitive advantage?

Guidelines for the assignment

• All sections carry equal marks;
• your essay is not to exceed a limit of 3,000 (+/-10%) words, excluding references and appendices;
• Be organised. Think of your assignment as a project with three stages. During stage one, you need to collect the necessary information for the company of your choice. Make sure you have a good understanding of the information you will need to collect. In stage two you need to analyse this information and ensure you have all that is necessary to answer all the questions. In stage three you will develop and submit your final assignment (essay) in a Word or pdf file;
• You should incorporate information about the described company from secondary sources, including business journals and company websites;
  By ‘concepts’ and ‘ideas’ it is meant any general and abstract idea, framework or research method introduced during the lectures, covered in the core textbook, and supported by further reading (i.e., academic articles). For example: market segmentation, customer experience, voice of the customer, Customer Portfolio Analysis, etc.;
• ensure that you use a broad approach in your essay;
• You are not permitted to draw upon any of the cases and examples discussed during lectures for this assignment.
• Within the Department of Marketing, we use the Harvard System of referencing. Refer to MyPlace for links on Harvard referencing. To avoid plagiarism, you must ensure that you acknowledge the information throughout your assignment.